Railways Bill (Fourth sitting)

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I wish to speak to new clause 15. In doing so, I must ask the Minister for his assistance with either a medical or a political problem—I am not entirely sure which it is, because I cannot get a GP appointment in Didcot as we do not have a GP surgery on Great Western Park, but that is an issue for another time. In the absence of a GP appointment, I really hope that the Minister will be able to save me from sullying my reputation. In speaking to this new clause, I find myself at risk of having to say something positive about the Thatcher Government, which is obviously somewhat politically embarrassing.

New clause 15 proposes adding a rolling programme of electrification to the Bill. The reason that I may need to say something nice about the Thatcher Government is that according to figures that I have looked at, nearly 3,000 km of railway was electrified under that Government during the 1980s, to which the just 170 km electrified under the 1997 to 2010 Labour Government compares very unfavourably. That perhaps comes as quite a surprise, given that there was significant economic growth during that later period, at least compared with today—[Interruption.]

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I think we just heard an Opposition Member ask, “What were they doing?” in respect of the 1997 to 2010 Government. The answer, of course, is that capital investment had to be directed to safety in the aftermath of Hatfield and other disasters. When we look at where exactly that money was spent, it was on the safety improvements necessitated by some of the disasters caused by privatisation. I am a strong supporter of electrification, as I know the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage is, but I thought it was important to place that on record.

[Olly Glover]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will say two things in response. First, I hope that his Government and the Minister will support the new clause, because, given the strong state of railway safety today, there should not be the same limits on electrification expenditure that he suggests. Secondly, the problem with his point is that very few electrification schemes were authorised between 1997 and 2000, the period before the Hatfield rail disaster, which led to the period of safety recovery that he quite rightly highlighted.

The direction that the Government are taking is a big concern. They have yet again cancelled the midland main line electrification, a scheme that would have happened 40 years ago in any other European country. Our stop-start progress on electrification compares very unfavourably with other countries in Europe. Germany has delivered a steady 200 km a year, or thereabouts, on average for many decades, and in so doing delivers significantly lower unit costs than our boom and bust approach to electrification. It is not just Germany. We often hear excuses about how electrification is too difficult for us because of our limited gauge clearance or our scenery, but that does not explain the fact that the entire Swiss rail network is electrified, including railways in UNESCO world heritage sites and more than 3,000 metres above sea level.

With the exception of the trans-Pennine route upgrade and a couple of other very small schemes, nothing is committed at the moment. That is a real shame, because the benefits of electrification are significant. I feel that we have perhaps lost our way in this country. We have become very focused on electrification as a means of decarbonising our railways, but that is a small part of the enormous benefits of electrification. Electrification delivers more reliable, lighter trains that have far less impact on the track and are also cheaper, because pure electric multiple units are the standard off-the-shelf product across the European rolling stock market. What wouldn’t any other sector—whether it is shipping, which I know the Minister has a keen interest in, aviation or the car industry—give for the ability to provide constant electrical power to get the amazing power-to-weight ratio that electrification delivers?

We constantly talk about the lack of freight on our rail network. A big part of that is that rail freight tends to be diesel hauled, which has far worse acceleration and consumes far more track capacity. On a recent journey across Germany and other parts of Europe, I did not see a single diesel-hauled freight train; they were all electric. That enables so much more to be squeezed on to the network, and would support private sector investment. For example, GB Railfreight has invested in a fleet of locomotives that can haul both diesel and electric. Having visited its Peterborough headquarters a few months ago, I know that it would like to run under electricity far more than it is currently able to because of our electrification rate. We are in a very poor state, and not just compared with western European countries; Poland and India have significantly higher percentages of electrified railways than we do. At the moment, I see no hope of that changing.

Our new clause 15, requiring a rolling programme of electrification, would also significantly reduce unit costs, because the supply chain would get used to doing it, we would become experienced at structures clearance, and so on. That is not my opinion; that is what Sir Andrew Haines, former chief executive of Network Rail and now chair of DfT Operator, said before the Transport Committee.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

The official Opposition, strongly support this amendment because it seeks to increase passenger traffic on the railways, in addition to the welcomed inclusion of an objective to increase freight. We agree with it so strongly because it is almost identical to our amendment 35, which I shall also speak to. Amendment 35 would add a specific requirement to subsection (2) paragraph (b) of clause 18—the duties clause—for GBR Ministers and the Office of Rail and Road,

“to increase the number of passenger journeys”.

This directly addresses the concern raised by the Campaign for Better Transport in the evidence received by the Committee. It is an essential amendment to ensure that GBR has a key focus and aim to increase passenger numbers—something that is essential for a railway. It would ensure that the dominant culture of GBR is not one where passengers are seen as creators of damage to infrastructure.

That is not a loose accusation that I have made; I have been listening to the industry for over a year now. The core structure of GBR is Network Rail. I know that I am bound to be corrected if I get this even a couple out, but I believe that Network Rail has about 41,000 members of staff. Network Rail is the central body to which train operating companies have been added at a rate of about one every six weeks or two months over the last period. An oft-repeated criticism of the culture of Network Rail has been that it sees passengers as a necessary irritation in the correct functioning of the railway. Sir Alec, if your organisation is engineer focused, the condition of the infrastructure is what is most important to you. Passengers demand lots and lots of trains, but lots and lots of trains damage the infrastructure. There is a concern in the wider sector— I am merely passing it on—that the culture of Network Rail has historically been one in which it wants to limit the number of trains to what it considers to be acceptable, so that it has a nice steady state of repair of the infrastructure. If that is the dominant culture that pervades GBR, now that it is bringing everything together, that will be a disaster for passenger services, because there would not be an automatic incentive to focus on an increase in passenger journeys, which is why amendments 133 and 35 are so important.

New clause 42—to go into the detail a little—would require the Secretary of State to set, publish and keep under review a passenger growth target. It would also require GBR to have regard to that target when exercising its statutory functions. In oral evidence to this Committee, Ben Plowden, chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport, said:

“It is welcome that there is a duty to promote the interests of passengers and disabled people in the Bill. We think there is a case for strengthening that duty so that it aligns with the duty in relation to freight, which is to promote the use of the network for passengers and disabled passengers. There should also be an equivalent duty on the Secretary of State to set a passenger growth target, as she is required to do in relation to freight, so that, as we picked up on a minute ago, GBR does not end up being incentivised not to grow the network in order to meet its crowding and reliability duties, for example. It seems to us that giving it a statutory incentive to increase passenger use over time would be very helpful to build on the existing duty in the Bill.”––[Official Report, Railways Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2026; c. 24, Q49.]

That organisation was not alone, because John Thomas from ALLRAIL said:

“I think a passenger growth target is really important. At the moment, the duties for GBR only include improving performance. You can improve performance, as we saw during covid, by cutting the number of services, but that is not necessarily in the best interest of customers. We think a balance between a performance target and a passenger growth target is really important.”––[Official Report, Railways Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2026; c. 47, Q78.]

Finally, we heard from Rob Morris of Siemens. He said:

“What we seem to be missing in the Bill at the moment is the ambition for passenger growth, how that will improve the railway and the levels of investment that need to go with it.”––[Official Report, Railways Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2026; c. 64, Q122.]

It is unclear to me why, if the Bill can require a target to increase use of the railway network for freight, the same obligation is not applied to passenger services. The inconsistency suggests a deliberate choice not to mandate passenger growth. And why would GBR care about passenger growth? After all, if it will be dominated by Network Rail, there is at least a risk that its culture will be one of avoiding damage to infrastructure, in excess of looking after growing the number of passengers.

In written evidence to the Transport Committee, Rail Forum said:

“From Rail Forum’s perspective there is nothing specific in the Bill that will guarantee improved travel for passengers. Improvement is predicated on the goodwill of GBR and others driving things in the ‘right direction’. In our view the key to improvement is culture change within those organisations coming together to form GBR. Creating GBR from Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd…will not signal the need for change and creates a risk that the current Network Rail culture will be seen as the norm and hence the status quo will prevail.”

These are not arguments made up by a cunning Opposition to wrongfoot the Government. This is the Opposition doing our job properly and reflecting the concerns of the wider sector—not just from one organisation but from multiple organisations, right across the sector. They identify the drafting as a problem and the culture as potentially a problem unless the legislation makes it clear that it is a duty of GBR to increase passenger numbers.

[Laurence Turner]

As in this morning’s sitting, I draw attention to the fact that I am a member of Unite. I did not intend to speak in this particular debate, but I wish to respond briefly to some of the things that have been said and to mount a perhaps limited defence of Network Rail and the importance of engineering in such organisations. The comparator, of course, was Railtrack, which outsourced its engineering functions, had only a single engineer on its board of directors and had only one non-executive director from an engineering background, with deadly consequences, which are well understood and do not need repeating. If there is sometimes caution in the organisation, I suggest that the long shadow cast by the events of the late 1990s and early 2000s is why.

There is good and sound logic behind not running too many trains across congested track. The real reason why we do not run as many trains as is theoretically possible is that lack of capacity on the network. Birmingham New Street, for example, will be exhausted once the Camp Hill services start in the spring—any more services simply cannot be safely got in or out on the network. When path allocators have to make decisions on which services to prioritise, freight tends to be squeezed out. That is a long-standing problem.

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is right partially to defend Network Rail. It is an issue of balance and of the culture going forward. He also talked about capacity—this is not a party political point—but that is determined by not just the number of trains, but the length of trains, which makes an enormous difference. Just increasing carriage numbers—in particular on the Northern rail network where the majority of trains are just two carriages—by a couple of extra carriages does not require significantly increased capacity on the line, but it does increase capacity enormously for passengers. That would allow a target for increased passenger numbers to be fulfilled, without an increase in line capacity.

[Laurence Turner]

I thank the shadow Minister for the constructive spirit of his intervention. Indeed, in the days of cross-party consensus on High Speed 2, I worked with members of his party exactly to address some of the capacity challenges on the network. I just say to him that the two are linked. As he was alluding to, the length of the trains is related to the signalling blocks and the safe distance between trains, so that they can be run together. If he is right, we should be looking to put on more carriages. When waiting for a CrossCountry train, I can certainly remember the collective groan on the platform when another short formation appeared. There is a hard limit, however, to what can be applied without providing more caps on the network. That is where the passenger versus freight dilemma comes in, because sometimes hard choices just have to be made. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that this is not always either/or, but sometimes it is. Sometimes one has to be prioritised over the other, and freight has historically been the loser.

[Olly Glover]

I am trying not to make too many interventions or to be tedious, but I cannot resist the temptation of that. Where the choice is either/or, does that not suggest that that particular route line requires an upgrade to provide sufficient capacity for both?

[Laurence Turner]

The hon. Gentleman and I are members of the same Select Committee and we tend to agree on most things, and I think that I agree with him again. In the here and now, however, and in the circumstances in which the Bill will start to apply, I share the fear that if the freight growth target is accompanied by an equivalent passenger growth target, in effect the freight growth target is neutralised; it is no longer the essential correction to the tendencies that have sometimes seen freight services being squeezed off the network. I say to the shadow Minister that the previous Government put in place a freight growth target and not a passenger one at the same time, presumably for exactly the same reason: at times when the two are in tension, freight can suffer the detriment. I thought it was important to put that concern on the record.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. One of the stand-out moments from Tuesday’s oral evidence was that given by the mayors, Andy Burnham and Tracy Brabin. What it highlighted, apart from their articulate defence of their regions’ interests, was how different things will be, under the current proposals, in mayoral combined authorities: there will be the right to ask or be consulted on the devolution of aspects of rail to those authorities. That is great as far as it goes—they said that it did not go far enough, but it goes some distance in that direction.

However, what if an area is not a mayoral combined authority? I believe that is the point that my hon. Friend is making: without the direct relationship that the Government are anticipating for mayoral combined authorities, at the expense of other parts of the country, the “purpose” clause becomes more important. That is another reason why paragraphs (e) and (f) and others are helpful.

Many Members and constituents across the country were enthused by the restoring your railway fund and the new stations fund, which have unfortunately now been scrapped by this Government. They were set up in the last Parliament and led to a renaissance of interest in local railway investment and a focus on modernising working practices and innovating to improve productivity, efficiency and passenger experience.

Working practices are not really spoken about in the Bill as it is currently drafted. This is not a new start-up—we have to be quite clear about that: it is building a new organisation out of some very old organisations, including Network Rail. The aim of modernisation is to do more for less. That is a good thing because it means that there is more money left over for further investment in improving infrastructure and improving or increasing passenger services and more left in the kitty to reduce subsidies—the taxpayer support—and by extension reduce the tax burden on our hard-pressed constituents. Doing more for less by modernising working practices and innovating to improve productivity efficiency is an unalloyed good. It should be very important and at the heart of any organisation—yet the Bill is silent on it.

Although I can hear the subtext, but the new clause is not intended to be a union-bashing measure. It is intended to make a dynamic organisation that has its passengers—its users—at the heart of its interests and that there is a focus on ensuring that GBR continues to have growth as part of its objectives. That aligns with the Government’s decision to put growth at the heart of their mission.

[Laurence Turner]

The hon. Member particularly mentioned workforce productivity.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Not only.

[Laurence Turner]

Okay, perhaps we will come back to that. However, the hon. Member also mentioned the restoring the your railway fund, which he talked about as a success. When the last Conservative Rail Minister, Huw Merriman, appeared before the Transport Committee he said, of that programme, that

“The challenge was that a lot of people had their expectations dashed. A lot of business cases were, “Let’s move it to this stage so we can keep the dream alive.” That just wastes money and expertise because you know that scheme is not going to get a return. I have mixed feelings on it as a result.”

Does the hon. Gentleman share some sympathy with that perspective?

[Jerome Mayhew]

Yes, I do, but then democracy is really messy, isn’t it? If we listen to passengers and our constituents, we hear all sorts of desires that may not be sufficiently persuasive to obtain Government funding, but the process of asking people for their views should not be shied away from. It sounds as though, in the experience of our former colleague Huw Merriman, some rather weak political decisions—or decisions of expediency—were taken. That does not mean that we should move away from the democratic process; we should listen to people. I do not say that the restoring your railway fund was a failure, because we listened and we heard.

I will pick up on the other point because I was sitting down when I barracked the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield: modernisation is not just about working practice. I want to make that really clear: modernising is about productivity enhancement of at-times-sclerotic organisations. I am a former entrepreneur. I ran a business for well over a decade on a much smaller scale than this. At the end, I employed about 1,000 people; I took it from start-up to about that stage.

Even a fast-growth, highly entrepreneurial and—in the views of other people—highly dynamic business such as the one that I was lucky enough to lead had all sorts of internal inconsistencies and inefficiencies, and needed to focus relentlessly on improving working processes and practices. That was right at the sharp end of the private sector. If it was true for my organisation then, think how true it is for a very large organisation such as Network Rail, which has 40,000-plus staff, and will be much bigger still when it becomes Great British Railways.

Paragraph (h) of new clause 1 states the need to improve and consider

“the experience of disabled and vulnerable passengers”.

Key terminus stations have good systems in place but that could be expanded with investment such as in the cross-party Access for All fund, which did huge work to improve disabled access in stations.

Paragraphs (i) and (j) are on a key theme that we have explored throughout our consideration of the Bill: open access and freight. They would ensure

“fair and transparent treatment of open access, freight and devolved operators”

At times it feels like we speak too much about open access in relation to this Bill. If we look at the capacity—the number of passengers covered by open access operators—we see that in percentage terms it is very small.

[Laurence Turner]

Two per cent.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I was going to say 1.5%, but maybe it is 2%. Let us call it approximately 2%; I leave rail freight in a separate category. But open access operators have a disproportionate impact on driving competitive challenge.

One of the very significant concerns of the sector, which I share, is that if the very dominant GBR is created and the operator and open access operators are not supported, even though they represent just 2% of passenger transit what will be lost is the competitive comparator for what good operating processes and customer-focused activities for train operations look like. It is disproportionately important that GBR should be held to account practically by the operations of open access operators, so such operators must receive fair and transparent treatment. That is what paragraphs (i) and (j) set out. They would ensure that the system is transparent where we believe that the legislation as drafted is currently vague.

Paragraph (j) enshrines the growth freight targets that we all agree on and that the Government have outlined. Paragraph (k) states the need to strengthen

“the financial sustainability of the railways”

to reduce reliance on subsidy. That should be an objective, and a purpose, of GBR. The taxpayer has lots of things that his or her money needs to be spent on. If we can reduce, over time, the need for subsidy on the railways, that money is freed up either for tax cuts, which make everyone richer, or to be spent on other important priorities of Government.

Meanwhile, paragraphs (l) and (m) speak to another key aim—integration, both of track and train, and of the mayors, with their local transport integration beyond rail, which are important to have. The lack of explicit inclusion in the Bill feels like an oversight that we are more than happy to shed light on for the Government.

Sir Alec, you will be pleased to know that that is it as far as new clause 1 is concerned, but I do have new clause 2 to entertain you with, which is about key performance indicators. The Government have been asked multiple times over the last few months to provide, even in draft, the KPIs that they intend Great British Rail to operate under. This clause is a first attempt to fill the gap that the Government have left by refusing time and again even to discuss what the KPIs will be, other than to say, using their go-to phrase, that they will be “robust”. What does that mean? We do not know.

The new clause would set a statutory key performance indicator framework, which must include targets for a number of areas, such as reliability, safety, cleanliness, affordability, passenger growth, financial efficiency, freight and others. It is necessary because of the failure of the Government. I would be delighted to withdraw it if the Minister were to stand up and say, “These are the KPIs that the Government have in mind—let’s debate them.”

At the moment, we have draft legislation in front of us—we are a scrutinising Committee and we are here for a month to go line-by-line through the Bill to improve it and understand how GBR will be operated—and yet we have no idea what the Government are even thinking on KPIs, which are a central set of objectives. This new clause seeks not to bind GBR or the Secretary of State to rigid targets, but instead to provide an overall remit for where the Secretary of State and GBR must report within.

Accountability is at the core of public trust in nationally run services, and setting targets in statute ensures there is a positive feedback loop for officials—very importantly—and GBR agents to work against. It helps frame discussions and engagement between the Departments and GBR, and allows a number of different datasets and parameters to be considered. The new clause would also require the Secretary of State to publish these indicators and lay them before Parliament.

The KPIs work as a strong starting position by which GBR can judge itself, and how it in turn can be judged by passengers and the public. Again, the Opposition are having to do the Government’s work for them. We should not be in that position. The Government should have brought forward this Bill with the accompanying documentation, which, as we have heard, is missing— 19 important documents and counting.

Finally, I turn to new clause 5. You will be pleased to hear that it is much shorter, Sir Alec. The new clause would give reporting requirements to GBR, continuing the theme of accountability, which new clauses 1 and 2 also have at their core. The layout of the new clause is self-explanatory. Subsections (2) and (3) link to new clause 2 on key performance indicators, and the clause would enhance accountability further, not just by having targets in place, but by having a clear reporting criterion.

In the same way that a Secretary of State is expected to appear in front of Parliament on a rotating basis in urgent questions, in Committees and through written ministerial questions, it is reasonable to expect that GBR should publish an annual report in which it reports on the targets set by the Secretary of State. Given the eminently sensible and logical outcome of the new clauses, I urge the Government to consider seriously on what basis it would not want to create greater transparency.